Snatched
by Ayehli
Summary: An aged Toby recalls his own, very different version of those thirteen hours.


I

Sarah never believed me when I told her that I remembered everything. "You were one year old," she would say to me. "No one remembers things from that age." She was a kindergarten teacher by then, and considered herself an authority on children of all ages.

She herself refused to ever speak of it. She doted on me into adolescence in a way that my parents never did, and I loved her like a mother, but when the subject of those thirteen hours came up it was as though an iron door slammed shut between us, and no amount of knocking could force it open.

It is ten years since Sarah died, many more years since my parents departed this world. I have lived longer than any of them thought I would, and only I know why.

But now, as I lay here in this bed where I slept beside my wife for so long, distantly aware of the sound of children and children's children coming and going, of hands on my brow and the occasional tear being shed, I believe that my time has finally come. It is a relief, in a way, perhaps as much for me as it must be for them.

Sarah never believed me, but I did remember. Even when the ravages of old age became a nimble-fingered thief, stealing items one by one from the corners of my mind, those memories refused to fade. I have trouble remembering the names and ages of my grandchildren, but the night that Sarah wished me away remains etched in my memory as clearly as a motion picture screen, its colors unfaded, every piece intact, an unchanging narrative.

When the moment of my death comes it will be, I know, all that is left.

II

The moments before I was snatched are less clear, I will admit that. Sarah filled in the gaps for me—she would speak of everything that led up to my disappearance, just nothing that came after. She never tried to justify what she did, only told me how it happened as best she could, perhaps to assuage her own guilt. I never blamed her for it. We were both children.

She says that I never stopped crying when my parents left, and I believed her. Even then, I think, I was longing for them to be with me more than they seemed to have time for. I imagine that the girl they left in charge was, to my one-year-old self, a poor substitute—smaller, angrier, not smelling or feeling the same as my mother.

In the moment that she wished me away I remember a thousand things simultaneously, in a way that is impossible to describe, though I shall try here, one last time. It was as though the entire world—everything I would ever know, everything I could ever know, faces, places, smells, sounds, loves, hates—spun around me like a gyroscope with my tiny body at its center. And then, as that world closed in tight around me, I was _aware_. This was what Sarah could never believe, that a one-year-old child could be aware. But I am sure that it happened, for how else could I remember the next thirteen hours so clearly?

I remember being passed from one pair of goblin arms to another, and being strangely unafraid. The goblins smelled of leather, earth, and steel, a not altogether unpleasant smell, and they were gentle with me, even if their hands were rough. I remember feeling awe emanate from them, as if I were something precious that they were honored to hold. It was a feeling I had seldom experienced in my own home.

From hand to hand, grunt to grunt I was passed, my nose gently tweaked a few times along the way, until I was suddenly held by a pair of hands that were human, and cuddled in the arms of a creature who smelled of spices, lavender, and incense, all bound up in that strange essence that I came to know as fae. He wore gloves of polished leather, his shirt was silk, and the pendant that hung around his neck gleamed silver in the faint light of the throne room. I was not even sure that he was a he—his eyes were delicate, like my mother's, but his face was full of sharp lines and angles, like my father's. He smiled down at me and stroked my hair.

"Welcome," he said. His voice was music. "Welcome, my son. How long I have waited for you."

And the goblins chuckled and tweaked my nose again, and the King bounced me on his knee, and I knew that I never wanted to leave this place.

III

I was mostly unaware of Sarah's quest to find me during those hours, and she never told me much—only said that she was sorry, again and again. I only knew that I was happy, so happy, and that I didn't want it to end.

The King told me stories and fed me fruits and nuts from silver trays brought by goblin servants, which my baby self somehow had no trouble chewing and swallowing. His stories were of ancient whales that did battle with storm gods riding ships made of sea foam, of fae-children born to humans who flitted between one world and another, of beasts that lived beneath the earth in a realm where no light touched and everything was seen with the nose and the paw. He told me stories the like of which I never heard again, try as Sarah might to emulate them.

From his crystals he made me a wooden sword, a pet rabbit, and a dozen balloons that floated and bounced through the throne room to be tossed and caught by gleeful goblins. And in his crystals he was always watching, always troubled, until finally I asked him, in the way of the mind-speaking gift his world had granted me, what he saw in them.

He smiled and floated the crystal in front of my face. I saw Sarah wandering through the hedge maze, making little marks with her lipstick. I knew her face, but I was already beginning to forget it.

"Your sister is coming for you," he said to me, in his voice that sang and spoke at the same time. "She would take you away from me."

_No_, I said. _I don't want to leave_.

He tossed the crystal into the air, and it became a butterfly that landed on my red-and-white striped knee. "Worry not, my son. I will persuade her to stay with me. With us."

_But what if she refuses?_

He laughed. "How can she refuse her own dreams? This place, these creatures—even I am her own creation. She made me like a toymaker makes a doll, sewn of her own fears and desires." Another crystal appeared in his hand, and he watched Sarah's face. "Dreams are very persuasive, my son. She would never give them up."

IV

I only made Sarah cry once in all the years we lived together, in all the years she cared for me like a mother. It was the night of my fourteenth birthday, a night that my father and mother had promised to make it home for, despite having scheduled another one of their many trips abroad. They didn't make it, of course. For the third year in a row. Sarah picked up the phone when they called, and halfway through the conversation I slammed the door to my bedroom.

She knocked. "Toby? Toby, please come out."

I ignored her. I was a teenage boy, and I was going to prove that I was tough enough not to need my sister. Or anyone else.

"Toby, please come out and talk to me."

I sat on my bed, arms folded, hands balled into fists as tears welled in my eyes. I raged inwardly at my own weakness, and decided it was all Sarah's fault. She had coddled me like a baby for years. She had comforted me when my parents neglected to. And she, after all, was the one who had snatched me from everything I held dear.

I must have sat that way for an hour, and I could still hear her breathing on the other side of the door. Finally I got up and opened it. The sight of her tear-streaked face somehow made me angrier.

"Toby—"

"Go away."

"Toby, please, let's go out for your birthday."

"You go out. I'm fine right here."

"Toby, I know you're mad at them, and they were horrible, really—"

"Them? You think I'm mad at _them_?" I felt my face smile cruelly, and inwardly felt shocked at what I was about to do—but things moved forward with the progression of a wave, unstoppable. "You're the one who did this to me!"

She stared at me, and that cruel part of me delighted in the sight of more tears welling in her eyes. "What did you say?"

I spat the words at her like acid. "You never should have brought me back!"

She stepped back from the doorway, almost as though I had hit her. I knew I had hurt her more than anyone ever had, and I felt a thrill of triumph, coupled with a horrible, sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

She didn't cry, though. She stared long and hard at me, and as her expression changed from one of shock to one of disgust I began to be afraid. I opened my mouth and she slapped me full across the face.

I had underestimated her—the slap knocked me backward, and I had to grab onto the doorframe to keep my balance. My left ear was ringing. She was breathing hard, her brown eyes glaring into mine.

"You ungrateful little goblin," she said. Her voice was quiet. "Do you know…do you know what I went through to get you back?" Her voice wavered. "Do you know what I gave up to get you back?"

My triumph was gone, replaced completely by the feeling of sickness and self-disgust that had crept in earlier. She was right. I had never thought about what she had gone through, only what I had lost. And as for what she had lost…

"Sarah, I'm—"

"It wasn't real," she interrupted me. Her voice was flat, and the eyes that stared at me were lifeless. "What he offered you. What he offered me. None of it was real."

I started to tell her I was sorry, that I was stupid and wrong, but she turned and slammed the door to her own room.

We didn't speak of that night until many years later, when I would finally come to understand what it was that she had given up.

V

The King built little worlds for me within his castle, encased in giant versions of the crystals that were everywhere. There was a jungle full of strange beasts where we played at battle with my little wooden sword, a mass of floating clouds where I could jump from one to the other like a frog jumping lily pads, and my favorite, a room of a thousand staircases, some going up, some going sideways, some twisting at impossible angles, all of them free for me to climb on, which I did, for what seemed like ages.

The King was gone for a long period while I played in that staircase-room, and when he returned his face was lined and more troubled than it had been before. He chased me up and down the staircases, but I could feel that his heart was heavy.

_What is wrong?_

His smile was sad as he sat down on one of the staircases and bounced me on his knee. "Your sister is getting closer than I thought she would."

_Closer? But you'll stop her, won't you?_

His eyes were distant, and he seemed to forget I was there for a moment. When he spoke, it was more to himself. "She shattered the ballroom."

I waited, not understanding.

"She shattered what I made for her, what I offered her…what a strange girl, to shatter her own dreams…"

His voice was beginning to frighten me. _But_ _you'll stop her, won't you?_ I repeated.

He shook his head as though shooing away a fly and smiled down at me, his old self again. "Of course, my son. This is my game, and no one has ever beaten me."

The staircase room was where the goblins hid me, when Sarah had indeed made it closer to the castle than the King ever thought she would. Before they rushed me away, the King whispered to me.

"She will come for you, my son, and she will find this room—she has found everything else that I have kept hidden. But she will not be able to move about it as you can. She will chase you, and call for you, but you must not let her catch you."

_What will you do? _

The King hugged me tightly, and I smelled again that strange mix of incense, lavender, and fae-essence, now laced with the scent of fear. "I will fight her with everything I have. And I will win. This is my game, and no one has ever beaten me."

The goblins carried me off, and I heard him say before he vanished, "Be brave, my son."

VI

Sarah lived the same unnaturally long life that I would live. She never married or had children—never even, to my knowledge, had lovers. She never pursued her childhood dreams of the stage, or traveled abroad, or wrote stories like the ones she had always told me.

She became a kindergarten teacher and stayed at the same school her entire life. She said that it was a sensible choice, an easy one, but I think she could never let go of the desire to protect small children, perhaps still fearing that at any moment any one of them could be wished away by a careless half-sister.

As I sat by her bedside that night, both of us grown old and frail, I remembered the night that I had made her cry and suddenly many pieces of our lives came together, and my heart began to break for her.

"Sarah, I'm so sorry."

She smiled at me, the lines on her face sharply defined in the lamplight. "Sorry for what, Toby?"

"I didn't know…I knew that you suffered to get me back. But I didn't know…I didn't know that giving up your dreams meant…"

She laughed. "Meant that I would never have any?"

I nodded, feeling a tightness in my throat. "I always wondered why you never married…or wrote…"

"Or did anything except take care of you? Yes, I'm sure you thought I was just lazy…"

"No! I…I thought you were sad, and I didn't know why…but when he offered you your dreams…and you didn't take them…"

She finished it so matter-of-factly. "I gave up the chance to have any more."

"Did you know, at the time?"

"Not really. But in a way, I did." She smiled at me. "I don't regret it, Toby."

I stared at her. "How can you not regret it?"

"I never had dreams of my own. But I lived yours. And I lived the children's." She closed her eyes. "Mine wasn't a bad life."

I took her hand. We had seldom touched, all these years. "I'm so sorry," was all I could think to say.

"You forgave me, Toby. That was enough."

I sat there with her long into the night, watching as her breath grew shallower, until finally her grip on my hand loosened. She was smiling when I pulled the cover over her face.

VII

I played my part well. Sarah ran up and down the staircases calling my name, but she never caught me. I had almost forgotten her by then, and my mother and father were dim memories. It was only the King's troubled face that reminded me that they were a part of my world.

From a distance I heard him singing and dancing her into his arms, into his world, using every last power he had at his disposal. I crawled up and over a hundred stairs, completely unaware of what was about to happen.

Then something changed. The staircase room began to shift, and flicker, and the stairs I was climbing broke off from the wall they were attached to, so that I was floating on stairs in space. More pieces of wall and stair floated around me, and around them I could see pieces of night sky, and stars that seemed close enough to touch. There was nothing dangerous or frightening in this—it was a new game, perhaps, that the King had created for me.

Below me, the distant figures of the King and my sister circled one another. I could see the top of her head, which was black, and the top of his, which was white, making them look like two tiny marbles on a board, rolling toward each other, and then away.

"…I ask for so little…"

The King's voice seemed to echo in my mind. It sounded as if he was pleading, a tone I had never heard him use before. It made me uneasy.

"…I will be your slave."

The air around me seemed to hum, waiting. Below me I could see him holding out a crystal to her, and I wondered if it would turn into a wooden sword, or a rabbit, like mine had.

And then the world split apart.

I was falling, and I saw the faces of the goblins spinning around me by the thousands. The King was falling beside me, and I reached for him, and he called out, "My son, my son," but his body was shifting into a thousand different shapes, and there was nothing for me to hold onto. And the clock struck began to strike thirteen, each strike a knife in my heart.

Then I was in my crib, and Sarah was standing over me, and the awareness that the king had given me was slipping away. Before it faded I screamed at her, _Take me back! Take me back! Wish me away again! _

But all she saw was a drowsy baby, and all she heard was silence as I rubbed my eyes and slipped into sleep again.

VIII

My children are at my bedside now, though I am not always aware of their presence, and I have trouble remembering their names. They remind me, always, of the children that Sarah never had.

There are grandchildren, too, and perhaps even great-grandchildren. Their names are also mixed up in my head.

One of my children holds my hand, just as I held Sarah's. I speak occasionally, and he nods as if he understands.

Then the room shifts, and I see images from the worlds the King created for me—the jungle, the clouds, and finally the staircase room, where he sits watching me with a smile on his face.

"My son. I have missed you."

He moves to the edge of my bed and takes my hand, his body moving easily through the bodies of my children. He twirls a crystal in his palm, and my rabbit hops onto the bed.

I cannot speak, but my face tells him that I am happy to see him.

And then behind him I see the figure of my sister, radiant in a costume-like dress lit by stage lights, a kindly-faced man and two small children by her side. The King looks at her and smiles, and she smiles back at him.

I feel myself rise up to meet him, and I move to embrace the figures of my sister and her children. I see my own children embracing each other, and I want to tell them not to grieve, that I am finally going home, but of course I can't.

Instead I join hands with the King, with my sister and her dreams, and it seems that a vast maze stretches out before us, one that could take a dozen lifetimes to explore.


End file.
